Posted on 07/26/2002 4:57:54 PM PDT by Cato
mailto:tdswanson@tamu.edu
Ed. note: This is modeled off Joe "I-heart-Israel": Farah's "Why I am Not a Libertarian" column.
After I wrote a few columns last summer I received several emails including, a couple which asked if I would 'run for office.' Apparently, they thought I was one of their own. I hate to disappoint them, but that lot in life does not describe me.
Here's why I am not a statist
– and why, I believe, the god-complexed movement will never attract the anarchists of the world.
- I believe an individual cannot be controlled by any sort of fictitious entity that claims supernatural power.
Whereas it has been the case since man first appeared onto this rock, borders are artificially imposed by the will of bullies and their ilk. To initiate force against someone simply because they believe/act/look different than someone, would insult the word civilized.
To pledge allegiance to a cloth smeared by do-gooders and social engineers would then lead to what exists today, constant violence, strife and death.
- While I agree with the science showing illicit drugs such as hamburgers, fries, syrup and any other condiment from McDonalds can cause harm to the body, I have no problem with individuals in localized cells, creating competition and eating at Subway.
The truth is, trying to force someone to use or not use a certain substance will surely lead to increased rebellion and all around contempt. I'm all for giving advice, but condoning the use force is the wrong prescription to a personal problem.
- Uhmerika is a name given to a piece of land by various individuals for various reasons – and this is a reality many statists don't accept. True, a concept of boundaries is useful, but it has been distorted and twisted.
This is no excuse for stealing wealth from individuals and using it to wage war on others, which is what statists have done since day one.
They deploy and employ tens of thousands of mercenaries in neighborhoods not too unlike those that some of us live in. That is wrong. They then expect no one to retaliate against them with weapons just as potent. That is equally naïve.
- Statists, more often than not, fail to understand the moral dimension critical to self-government. Read the words of the individuals that locked others out of a room and held a bacchanal of word-games and gerrymandering that ended with a document that was only equal in tyrannical terms than the Moore's Manifesto
. They missed reality by a long shot. They all thought that by smearing a bunch of ink across a piece of paper they could give themselves authority over others. Philadelphians must have had a cook out on September 17 with all those flying pigs landing in their back yards.
Statists make a fundamental mistake about trying to Hegelianize man. Man does his own thing for various reasons. Man can only do what other men let him do. Ideally, by not initiating force man can better himself. Statism is essentially the antithesis of civilization, it is death. It shoots first then demands the corpse bury itself. If man is to survive, then promoting life is the chance for man to maximize his freedom here on earth and then to the moon. Freedom cannot be limited, that is an impossibility.
It cannot be written down on a piece of paper, because it is an action.
Freedom is the opposite of coercion, and among other things, it creates wealth and stability… it is stability.
Statists hardly understand this, too many of them cannot comprehend a laissez faire environment where trade and commerce act as the boundaries and foundations civilization rests on.
Statists who expect to build such a society through some farcical aquatic ceremony
alone make a fundamental error.
In a sense, they are utopian dreamers like the Nazis of yesteryear, ignoring the fact they cannot give themselves authority is just the tip of the iceberg. I want to be really hard on statists, because they think they know better than others. They have a codependency issue that is blind to individualism.
They may indeed continue to evolve from one form or another, but they are dying out. I cannot ignore the flaws in their worldview. I cannot ignore the fact that they don't have a camera. I cannot ignore the fact, that the initiation of force is not only unwarranted but creates chaos and violence in biblical proportions.
Would this world be better off with more statists?
Here's a neat quote from Frederic Bastiat, the creator of the Minarchist Mocker :
If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it.
When the statists add such a provision to their daily rhetoric, let me know. I'll be happy to give them another thrashing.
July 9, 2002 Tim Swanson is a senior at Texas A&M University studying history and economics. He would add more to this but knows few people can read Klingon.
I agree in principle with what you are saying, but I need to characterize a bit how I critisize -- its not 'whining' nor 'piss and moan' it is condemnation, it is accusory, it unveils the misreasoning behind a thing and attempts to illustrate why a particular mental stance is wrong.
The 'speaking out' I referred to earlier is just that -- condemnation, and the hope I hold out is that people will learn to say 'Amen!' and learn to change our path from resignation to gallant engagement.
If we are in the end times, which I believe we are, the future looks bright
The 'end times' mentality and legend seeps into all of us even if we are irreligious and/or conciously reject it. It is self-fullfilling defeatism and as a singularity it is probably the most harmful idea man has ever entertained.
An excuse-maker in the first-degree.
This is a religious war, the war on terror is just one facet and manifestation of it. Man has always used distancing mechanisms to push himself from various aspects of life, to glorify and raise himself above it. By letting experts assume his judgments, to administer justice, both legal and social... his mind grows weak and dependent on outsiders for ethical norms.
He is no longer able to 'proof' his stance through critical thinking, and becomes a cheerleader for an ideology he has never explored the real structure of -- he instead admires the asthetic of facades.
An idyllic dreamer, demanding realities alignment to the vision, a liberal, a democrat.
This is why conservatives are so 'mean', 'mean' in the way a parent would be mean in the eyes of a child who will not be getting a puppy for christmas.
Socialism is intermittent communist practices. A communist practice is theft, of liberty, property, and life. A rapist is no less a rapist should he rape infrequently, the same with the theif. The same with a nation.
Once ethics become blurred enough, the only real hinderance to anything is finding enough justification. We turn to the statisticians, the experts, and we sacrifice this one key thing:
That a common man can look at a thing and determine if it be a goodness or badness.
'Thou shalt not judge' -- Ha! Yet another subversive double-agent meme in the mind of man in need of crucification on a pin shaft.
We have become sucklings to our systems. Our spines atrophied. Worms, my friend, man is now a worm.
When the shining city on the hill fails to inspire, the ugly stick of utter self-disgust can impel an individual toward change, in himself, in man.
The real war has always been within.
Or even sitting at a computer screen spewing libertarian bile after getting drunk on Ayn Rand rotgut plonk.
Maybe Sir Tim the Dyspeptic can hitch a ride on whatever comet Robert Heinlein escaped to and begin a perfect society anew.
Or did Heinlein die? Am I thinking of another group of superior human beings too pure for the messy world here below?
Tim should relax. Mom and dad will probably relent and send him the $150 he needs for new tires for the Gremlin.
Actually, only actively practicing and devout conservative Christians could even form a workable libertarian society--and precisely because they have the internal scruples, self-discipline, sobriety, and God-based morality necessary to bring it off.
It isn't the conservative Christians who would doom a libertarian society. It is the atheists and other moral half-wits and relativists who would doom it.
There are some silly, shallow-thinking Christians who believe libertarianism would work even in a society of atheists and libertines. Wise Christians know better and want no part of living in a society whose government champions pure self-worship, selfishness, and reckless self-indulgence. Such societies will either die by lapsing into anarchy, or will give rise to a suffocating nanny state that enables and cares for the moral reprobates at the cost of other taxpayers.
I'm not a libertarian because the very people who so desperately desire a libertarian society would be the first to destroy it.
I agree with you there. The founding fathers thought the same thing:
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Benjamin Franklin"
Some of us seem to think that we have "more need of masters."
Since we have an over abundance of masters then according to Ben Franklin we have either become More Corrupt and/or More Vicious.
Now one has to make a decision; Ben Franklin was stupid or more masters makes us less corrupt and vicious.
After Enron, WorldCom, Election scandels by both major partys, police cowboys(similiar to the cocaine cowboys), Tyco, Anderson, The Cable scandals and all the others corporate malfeasance I think Franklin was correct and we as a NATION have become more corrupt and vicious than at ANY Time in our history and many of the corporate scandels come back to Bush AND Xlintoon. Piss Poor leadership to be steering us out of this mess what with all the good old boys Bush is in bed with.
GWB isn't clean either. Remember the BallPark in Arlington deal to get a read on GWB's morals and business ethics and what he thinks of the common American. Not much. They didn't go to Yale. LOL!
CATO
God Bless
Not to be argumentitive, but do you really honestly believe our current "war on drugs" is working?
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